Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-28-Speech-3-159"
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to congratulate the rapporteurs, Mr Ortuondo Larrea and Mr Costa, for their splendid work within a very short space of time on a rather technical issue.
In relation to Amendment 4, where you want the Agency to act as the national authorities’ certifier, I am pleased that a reasonable compromise has been found in relation to Mr Ortuondo Larrea’s report. In the long term, the Agency could take on that responsibility, but at the present time experts agree that this kind of reorganisation would be premature. The potential models for cooperation between the European Railway Agency and national safety authorities must be examined. The Commission has undertaken to assess the impact of all these options to allow the best decision to be taken by 2015.
The other amendments are acceptable as they are, either in part or in principle, with the exception of three. Firstly, Amendment 5 grants the Agency a mediation role in problems with the issue of safety certificates. We do not agree with this amendment for the reasons already stated. Secondly, we do not accept Amendment 6 for reasons of coherence with the corresponding article in the Railway Safety Directive. Finally, we do not accept Amendment 8, since this would bring the Agency in as an adviser on commercial projects, whereas this task corresponds to a Community body.
I have listened carefully to all the speeches today. I feel that in the main the European Parliament has properly gauged the value of these provisions which are set to truly Europeanise our railways. I do not intend to answer all the questions posed. I simply wish to state that we have allocated 85% of funds for railway projects to the trans-European networks. I wish to tell Mr de Grandes Pascual that we have not neglected mountain routes, particularly the Pyrenees.
I also wish to say that, whatever approach is taken to the railway system, we must nevertheless admit that, if we want trains to make a comeback in Europe, we must make a genuine effort to Europeanise the system through technical interoperability and harmonised safety regulations.
Mr President, the year 2007 will be a key year for rail transport. As of 1 January national and international freight transport has been open to competition. We are seeing that the revitalisation process in this sector is beginning to bear fruit. The railways’ market share, following a decline since 1970 in most of the Member States, has now stabilised and is in fact growing.
The legislative proposals you are discussing here today will help railway companies compete with road traffic. I am therefore extremely pleased with the agreement on the interoperability directive, and the Commission will do all it can to bring about a rapid agreement on the other two aspects of these measures.
Mr President, please allow me to express my most sincere gratitude to all the Members who made a sustained effort on such a technical item. I feel this has helped us to make much more rapid progress since, had we been compelled to contemplate a second reading, we would have lost one precious year. Thus I feel that 2007 will be a good year for rail transport, and this also makes it a good year for the fight against global warming, in which we know rail transport may be particularly useful.
Concerning the proposal to recast the rail interoperability directives, I see that an agreement at first reading is within reach. This has been achieved as a result of several working sessions and I wish to congratulate Mr Ortuondo Larrea in particular for his personal undertaking to see this proposal through. It was important to establish a precise detailed procedure for certifying locomotives and other railway vehicles in relation to possible action by national safety authorities, and to simultaneously impose a ceiling on the maximum time-limit for the certification procedure, as Mr Jarzembowski said.
The result of the negotiations to which the Commission has made a technical contribution is an amendment which completely remodels the text of the directive, and with which the Commission agrees entirely. Thus, Mr President, if this agreement is confirmed, we will be sending out a firm political signal to industry and the national safety authorities.
It is now up to the national safety authorities to make the approval procedures for railway vehicles less expensive and more rapid. We will also be adopting this legislation in record time, showing that European laws can move at the same speed as the TGV.
I wish to reply to Chairman Costa in relation to the national safety authorities. These were created in response to the 2004 Railway Safety Directive. For most of the Member States, this meant creating a new authority from scratch, with all the budget and recruitment difficulties this entailed. It would be a rather difficult task, Mr Chairman, to take away a function from these authorities which has only just been allocated to them, and this would also cast doubts on the credibility of our railway policy. I agree with you, however. In the long term, we can imagine that one day there will be more extensive Europeanisation of this device. I wished to give you a reply on that point.
I now come to the issue of safety, where you acted as rapporteur. As you wished, a portion of these directives has been transferred to the new interoperability directive. With the exception of compliance with the new comitology decision through the introduction of the regulatory procedure with scrutiny, the only remaining major component of this proposal is the issue of railway vehicle maintenance and the role of vehicle keepers.
More than half the amendments tabled are acceptable to the Commission as they are in principle or in part. However, I must mention the situation of Amendment 21. On this rather technical issue, any amendments envisaged must comply with the legislation already in force, particularly the Safety Directive, but also the Technical Specification of Interoperability for wagons that entered into force on 31 January 2007 and the decision on the national vehicle register that entered into force on 9 November 2007.
These amendments must also be line, as far as possible, with the various situations that may be encountered in practice. They must bear a close relationship to the practices in force in other modes of transport. They must not enshrine in legislation a contractual commercial model that may evolve along with the reform of the railway system. That is why Amendment 21 does not meet with the approval of the Commission. The same is true, Mr President, with Amendments 3 to 7, 10, 14, 17 and 22, essentially for purely technical or judicial reasons.
I want to finish with some remarks on the proposed amendment to the Regulation establishing the European Railway Agency. Since the new functions assigned to the European Railway Agency basically depend on the interoperability and safety directives and the driver certification directive, the text should not pose any major problems."@en1
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